The Great Divide: Indian and Pakistan
HarperCollins and The India Today Group, India, 2009
Of Separation and Celebration
No other country in the modern history has been conceived out of as much blood as was spent in the formation of Pakistan. On August 14, 1947, the British colony gave a deadly parting blow to India--Partition. And, since the creation of Pakistan as a nation--Muslim nation, there has always been a sense of rivalry, and the two nations are always ready to fight the another. In the past there have at least three major wars between the two nations and in which the states of Jammu and Kashmir has been the ground for their exhibition of military power. While there have been rivalry between the nations in cases of land and territory, the major factor has been been the religious bent of the nations. While after the independence India declared itself a secular nation, Pakistan was conceived as a Muslim nation. There itself lies the seed of animosity between the two nations. In terms of religion, both the country have been the greatest of enemies. While partition was obviously the beginning of a bad day for India, and since then have seen each other only through the eyes of a gun-hole, there have born independent underground groups that are running terrorist activities at the both sides, and are always looking for ways to harm the another nation. And, it is there, in between the points of the guns from both sides, that the great wonderful culture of the ancient India has been at the risk of extinction. While we talk of India and Pakistan, we are reminded of the terrorist groups like Laskar-e-Toiba and several other mujahiddins, and lately, Ajmal Kasab who has been in the Indian custody after he was caught by the Indian security force while he was attacking the Taj hotel in Mumbai. There is always the sense of hatred and distrust between the nations. People see each other as enemies, and want to keep distance from the other.
But both the countries share the same history. Their origin is one. This fact always haunts the cultural historians that the country was a great space of cultural richness before partition. Now that the country has been broken into two halves, the art and culture have transformed and taken new shapes according to the ideology and conception of the two nations. Culture, art, music, crafts have all undergone suppression and are lost in the rivalry between the two nations. What has happened is the transformation of the ancient culture into a new one. But there still lies the semblance of originality that creates a nostalgic sense and takes one the pre-partition days when the culture was at its best.
Several historians, cultural critics and academicians have been concerned about the transformation the two countries have undergone since the fatal partition. The media and journalists have closely observed the sour relation between the two nations, and added some more pepper to it. In both the countries, there are people who celebrate partition, whereas there are others who take partition as the black event in the history of India. Ira Pande has done a tremendously difficult, and what appears to be impossible, job of bringing the writers, academicians, journalists and researchers in the same platform to talk about Partition--its conception, and its impact on the lives of the two nations. She has edited a number or essays written by experts from both the sides of the border. "The Great Divide" is the collection of those enlightening essays that tell us not only the stories of death and destruction but the about what they share in common in terms of culture, and have enlivened them in their lives in their own ways. As the editor says in the introduction, "there is a balance here between the "hard" topics (politics, economy, diplomacy, religion et al) and soft ones (music, crafts, language, cricket, cinema) to bring out the full range of our engagement with each other." The essays in the book ponder deep into these issues presenting in a manner of comparing and contrasting between the two nations--some of them lamenting on the partition of the single nation into two--and eventually three when Bangladesh was formed as a different nation after the war in 1972--as rival nations.
This manner of comparing, contrasting and lamenting starts right in the preface where the Congress leader Karan Singh says, "While the Partition is looked upon as a tragedy by us, it was a day of great celebration in Pakistan." Then he hints about how India has taken a route of progress and Pakistan done exactly the opposite: "In India, despite all our problems and tensions, corruption and poverty, casteism and communalism, we have been able to sustain and vibrant democracy with fourteen General Elections and hundreds of state elections resulting in smooth transfers of power. In sharp contradistinction Pakistan, since its inception, has been governed predominantly by a series of army dictators, although we are all watching the most recent democratic experiment with interest."
Pande has divided the essays under five different sections in terms of the issues covered. In the section 'The Division of Spoils', she has included essays on the background and reasons for the founding of Pakistan as a Muslim nation. The second section 'Growing Pains' includes essays on the post-partition trauma that the people of both the nations undergone, and the nightmare of the impending war between the two nations. In the third section 'Darkening Skies', she includes essays on the post-Partition rivalry between the two nations that is amplified in the recent days by the terrorist groups mainly based in Pakistan and fighting against India, and the Indian media that is more hateful of Pakistan. In the fourth section 'Chains and Links', she has included essays on the cultural aspects of art, literature and cinema that are still reminiscent of the India that was a One, undivided cultural haven before Partition. And, in the fifth section 'Personal Histories', she has included essays that look back to the lives of different Indian and Pakistani figures to find answers to many questions related to Partition. Towards the end, includes an interview with the Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam, and a short story by another Pakistani writer Daniyal Mueenuddin.
In the essay 'The Idea of Pakistan', Ashutosh Varshney talks of the two-nation theory, a complex of the people who thought that division of the nation into two would bring about peace. This complex was based on the idea of a horrific violence as evidence that Hindus and Muslims can not live with each other, and that Partition was the only way. The same two-nation theory, Varshney says, worked again in the formation of Bangladesh as yet another nation, when the Bengali-speaking Muslims started seeking an identity different from the mainstream, hence the bloody war that resulted in Pakistan-Bangladesh Partition in 1971.
In 'Founding Myths, Arvind Sharma looks into the ideas that dictated the partition of the then British India into two different nations. He says that the nationalism of Pakistan was based on religion--it was Islam that was to serve as the factor that bound its citizens. Indian nationalism, by contrast, was territorial and not religious in nature. And it is on the basis of basis of religious component of its nationalism that Pakistan claims its possession of Kashmir, for the latter is a prominently Muslim state. Whereas, India's claim on Kashmir is based on the basis of territory, not religion, and that it was ceded to India by the late maharaja of Kashmir.
In 'Envy--and We', Ashok Malik analyzes why India can not involve into immediate military confrontation even when she is provoked by Pakistan at many occasions in the recent times. He says, "Pakistan, although she knows that triumph is not on her side, wants to fight India--in guerrilla form or in nuclear form. India on her side has been impending the war because her growing economy will otherwise be severed. The impending war with China in economic and military terms, keeps India from spending is power in petty fights with Pakistan."
While both India and Pakistan boast of nuclear bombs and sophisticated defense arsenal, they tend to neglect their human resource by failing to provide education an health facilities. Meghnad Desai writes in 'Twin Troubles' that even when the life expectancy is in the mid-sixties and the extent of child malnutrition shocking, the priority of both the countries is on the weapons over human welfare.
While the blame-game is going on against each other for dividing the nation, B G Verghese sees to it that it is already about time that both the nations started working together to bring peace and stability not only for the two nations but for the whole of South Asia. Getting out from the story of partition which is "interwoven with many complex strands, dyed in blood and knitted in emotion", the two nations should take steps to settle the Kashmir issue. With a large Muslim population with its rich cultural history, writes Verghese, "India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could make a notable contribution towards a new Islamic renaissance."
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy argues that because the new Islamist tradition trying to break away from the original, the old heritage of Islam is dying. Classical music is fighting for survival, and the old instruments like the sarangi and rich tarveena are completely dead. In 'Towards Theocracy', he says, "The deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the soil that had nurtured a rich Muslim culture for a thousand years."
Essayists like Ajai Sahani openly exhibit their anger against Pakistan as the only state that wants war, while India is looking for peace. He establishes Pakistan as a failing state that has been devastated by her own Jihadis, which she can not control. He further comments that Pakistan is a great risk to India and other parts of the world, and that India should take initiatives in order to pacify Pakistan and stop the war that the latter is always willing to wage.
During the past two decades, the media has been an influential party to the Indo-Pak relations, and at times has been the arbitrary factor of war and peace between the two countries. Beena Sarwar asks a rhetorical question as to whether the media is part of the solution or part of the problem, and answers that it is both. She finds that the media is part of everything that goes between the two countries. Whereas, Amit Baruah terms the media as the fourth party. For him, if India and Pakistan are the two parties concerned, and America the third, then the media is the fourth party that makes a lot of impact in the relation between the two countries. And, if the media has played some roles towards strengthening the ties between people of the two nations, it has done more to create animosity between them. When the terrorist attack of Mumbai was telecast live to every household, the talk shows and analytic reports were estimating how many minutes it would take India to blow the cities like Lahore and Islamabad. Especially the 24 hour news television channels have been in the first row in false speculations and hyper-jingoist attitudes among people.
Apart from the essays, it is the historical pictures and paintings that add to the assets of the book. Aditya Arya's photo archive has provided undated photographs of the Muslim League meetings, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the League, of Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The photographs also portray the lives of the people of different walks of life before and after Partition. Salima Hashmi's compilation of contemporary paintings makes a good essay in itself, and in a note she comments, "Current events, growing militarism, and regional tensions are all translated into narratives, which belie the image itself."
This is one of the most thought provoking and captivating books that I have ever read. Almost every line of the book--whether it is written by the Pakistani intellectual or by the Indian journalist, makes me stop for a while and read again. I have in the course repeated many sentences and paragraphs, and never had more.
